Summary

The Panel on Building and Fire Research, a panel of experts appointed by the National Research Council (NRC), has assessed the scientific and technical work of the Building and Fire Research Laboratory (BFRL) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The panel visited the laboratory on March 9-11, 2010, and reviewed its activities. As requested by the Director of NIST, the panel assessed the following: (1) the technical merit of the current laboratory programs relative to current state-of-the-art programs worldwide; (2) the adequacy of the laboratory’s budget, facilities, equipment, and human resources, as they affect the quality of the laboratory’s technical programs; and (3) the degree to which laboratory programs in measurement science, standards, and services achieve their stated objectives and desired impact. Following is a summary of the panel’s conclusions addressing its charge.

TECHNICAL MERIT RELATIVE TO STATE OF THE ART

Overall, the technical merit of the programs within the BFRL is excellent and at the state of the art, although progress is sometimes hampered by factors beyond NIST’s control. The BFRL’s ability to stimulate new scientific and technological advances in high-performance buildings is constrained by major uncertainties about policy changes or by the presence of conflicting policies at the national, state, or local level. For example, countries with building energy performance standards more stringent than those in the United States have assumed leadership in this area, a position governed more by policy than by advances in technology or metrology. Barring this exception, the BFRL’s Strategic Priority Areas are well aligned with the NIST mission to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness through the development of measurement science, standards, and technology. Members of the BFRL staff are internationally recognized and are the recipients of prestigious awards within NIST, nationally, and internationally. The BFRL is conducting groundbreaking research in critical areas.

The BFRL researchers generally have long-standing and active relationships with other research facilities and organizations around the world. The ties to the external community are extensive and uniformly strong with industry and other-agency partners. Industrial engagement is through a deliberate organization of forums and workshops. BFRL staff is, with some exceptions, well informed with respect to work taking place in other national laboratories, at universities, in private industry, and in other nations. The BFRL does an excellent job of interacting with customers, and its staff participate actively in professional and trade committees on codes and standards.

The BFRL has performed a major roadmapping activity during the past 2 years, part of which involved preparing planned outcomes for the near term (within 3 years), medium term (3 to 8 years), and long term (beyond 8 years). Further, the BFRL balances the need for measurement science to support short-term labeling and prescriptive standards with the longer-term goal of anticipating the transition to performance-based codes and standards.

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"Summary."
An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Building and Fire Research Laboratory: Fiscal Year 2010.
Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2010.

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Summary
The Panel on Building and Fire Research, a panel of experts appointed by the
National Research Council (NRC), has assessed the scientific and technical work of the
Building and Fire Research Laboratory (BFRL) of the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST). The panel visited the laboratory on March 9-11, 2010, and reviewed
its activities. As requested by the Director of NIST, the panel assessed the following:
(1) the technical merit of the current laboratory programs relative to current state-of-the-
art programs worldwide; (2) the adequacy of the laboratory’s budget, facilities,
equipment, and human resources, as they affect the quality of the laboratory’s technical
programs; and (3) the degree to which laboratory programs in measurement science,
standards, and services achieve their stated objectives and desired impact. Following is a
summary of the panel’s conclusions addressing its charge.
TECHNICAL MERIT RELATIVE TO STATE OF THE ART
Overall, the technical merit of the programs within the BFRL is excellent and at
the state of the art, although progress is sometimes hampered by factors beyond NIST’s
control. The BFRL’s ability to stimulate new scientific and technological advances in
high-performance buildings is constrained by major uncertainties about policy changes or
by the presence of conflicting policies at the national, state, or local level. For example,
countries with building energy performance standards more stringent than those in the
United States have assumed leadership in this area, a position governed more by policy
than by advances in technology or metrology. Barring this exception, the BFRL’s
Strategic Priority Areas are well aligned with the NIST mission to promote U.S.
innovation and industrial competitiveness through the development of measurement
science, standards, and technology. Members of the BFRL staff are internationally
recognized and are the recipients of prestigious awards within NIST, nationally, and
internationally. The BFRL is conducting groundbreaking research in critical areas.
The BFRL researchers generally have long-standing and active relationships with
other research facilities and organizations around the world. The ties to the external
community are extensive and uniformly strong with industry and other-agency partners.
Industrial engagement is through a deliberate organization of forums and workshops.
BFRL staff is, with some exceptions, well informed with respect to work taking place in
other national laboratories, at universities, in private industry, and in other nations. The
BFRL does an excellent job of interacting with customers, and its staff participate
actively in professional and trade committees on codes and standards.
The BFRL has performed a major roadmapping activity during the past 2 years,
part of which involved preparing planned outcomes for the near term (within 3 years),
medium term (3 to 8 years), and long term (beyond 8 years). Further, the BFRL balances
the need for measurement science to support short-term labeling and prescriptive
standards with the longer-term goal of anticipating the transition to performance-based
codes and standards.
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ADEQUACY OF INFRASTRUCTURE
The equipment and facilities of the BFRL are generally excellent. Specific
equipment deficiencies have been largely resolved with American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009 funding (Public Law 111-5; ARRA, or stimulus, funds), and
plans for the addition of two major new facilities are well underway. The National
Structural Fire Resistance Laboratory (NSFRL) has been designed, and construction is
planned for the fall of 2010. The NSFRL fills an important gap in the fire test facilities at
the BFRL.
Also coming to the NIST site is a new residential test facility for evaluating
methods of design and construction targeted at achieving net-zero energy buildings. This
facility will allow the BFRL to measure the performance of various energy conservation
technologies and techniques and that of local energy generation technologies. The facility
will allow reconfiguration of many of its component parts to facilitate the installation of
new technologies and test protocols as they are developed.
There has been a long-term area of competence in fire at NIST, and the activities
in fire-resistant structural design have accelerated in the years since the World Trade
Center (WTC) investigations. With the plans for the construction of the NSFRL, the
activities are now at the point of making the BFRL a unique international resource in this
area. The technical caliber of the research being performed is exceptionally high, highly
relevant to national needs in the area of risk mitigation, and interdisciplinary. It provides
the general public and decision makers with highly favorable exposure to NIST research,
generating enthusiastic support for the role of NIST in building technology. Moreover,
the expansion of the laboratories will have a major impact on the entire BFRL program.
However, this expansion will require considerable new managerial resources and a
business plan for the operation of the facility over the next several years.
Additional resources are also needed to support the wind program. Although
recognized internationally, this program continues to be handicapped by the lack of a
wind tunnel.
The BFRL professional and support staff are highly qualified and motivated.
Since the previous panel review 2 years ago, the BFRL has been successful in filling
vacant positions with well-qualified individuals through extensive informational and
recruiting activities. Since 2006, the full-time staff additions (36) have exceeded the
departures (29). Concerns remain about the recruiting and retaining of staff for future
projects. Difficulties are exacerbated by the requirement to hire U.S. citizens and the
difficulty of finding candidates with the necessary interdisciplinary skills for the Office
of Applied Economics. Outreach and partnerships with universities (e.g., internships,
contract research) could increase the pool of potential new talent for needed
competencies.
A number of the key personnel in high-visibility programs are likely to retire
within the next 3 to 5 years. To the extent that certain of these programs are strongly
dependent on the capabilities and leadership of single individuals, it is imperative to
develop a plan for maintaining the momentum of the affected programs. BFRL
management should consider developing a formal succession planning program for
technical staff in key programmatic areas. On the plus side, there are leadership training
and staff development programs in place to develop new technical expertise and technical
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managers. The hiring of a new manager of codes and standards will fill an important gap
in the organization and staffing of the BFRL.
The current budget plan appears to be adequate for immediate facility, equipment,
and programmatic needs. Recent budget increases provide opportunities for
benchmarking BFRL facilities and equipment against international facilities and for
carefully choosing investments in facilities and equipment in order for the BFRL to
remain in a leadership position internationally. Across the BFRL, the balance of funding
provided from in-house work and work for other agencies is well aligned with that for
NIST as a whole, although some more-applied programs understandably have a higher
portion of support from work for others. The ratio of the support for work from other
agencies to the in-house funds (Science and Technology Research Services, or STRS,
funds) for the BFRL and NIST as a whole is about the same ($10.5 million and $37.3
million for the BFRL and $101.5 million and $504.5 million for NIST in 2010).
Discussions with staff indicated strong support for having a relatively large fraction of
external funding in some programs because of the interactions with clients that this
fosters. A question is raised in Chapter 5 on whether the future funding of research in the
National Structural Fire Resistance Laboratory would be a problem. The budget and
effort devoted to a safety upgrade of facilities were provided and conducted thoroughly,
with strong leadership and support from the BFRL management.
ACHIEVEMENT OF OBJECTIVES AND IMPACT
Since the panel review in 2008, the roadmap planning process has led to increased
consistency and cohesion across the BFRL (see discussions on the application of the
Stage-Gate process in Chapter 7). It has also assisted in the targeting of resources toward
a focus on high-impact areas. The most evident roadmapping process was that of goal
setting to prioritize work. The roadmap process is still in a state of rollout, and several
areas should be considered as next steps. The roadmap presented by the BFRL did not
include clear milestones with specific time frames. The BFRL has implemented a Stage-
Gate process for project planning.1 The staff should continue to manage and prioritize
projects using this tool. The staff should also refine the metrics of the tool based on
experience with project outcomes and should do postmortem analyses of projects to learn
from the use of the process.
A major impact of the research of the BFRL is in guiding the development of
codes and standards. The BFRL has been very active in setting up workshops with all
stakeholder groups—industry, and standards and codes organizations—both for
establishing national standards and for discussing how industry can use standards to
advantage to compete globally. These workshops have played an important role, both in
the setting up of roadmaps and in the development of measurement science in support of
national efforts on codes and standards. A noteworthy accomplishment of the BFRL
effort is the far-reaching safety improvements resulting from the adoption of
recommendations of the World Trade Center investigation in modifying key building and
fire codes and standards. The building program would benefit from the development of
new measurement science in construction at both the component and the systems level.
1
Additional information about the Stage-Gate process can be found at http://www.stage-
gate.com/knowledge_pipwhat.php. Accessed August 19, 2010.
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The dissemination of results to the research and customer community is excellent,
occurring through conferences, workshops, NIST technical publications, peer-reviewed
papers, and open-source software. The BFRL Web site (http://www.nist.gov/bfrl/)
provides excellent access to NIST products. Interest has been shown by industry in
commercializing or utilizing testing equipment developed by the BFRL (e.g., the
modified cone calorimeter, the integrating sphere weatherability testing equipment, the
Virtual Cement and Concrete Test Laboratory). Measurement science at the BFRL is
ahead of the adopted codes and standards in the construction, building, and fire
industries. This is the proper role for the BFRL to play. By aspiring to create new
measurement standards, the BFRL creates “proto-standards,” which lead in turn to widely
used codes and standards.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The recommendations of the panel based on its assessment of the Building and
Fire Research Laboratory are as follows:
 The BFRL staff should continue to manage and prioritize projects using the
Stage-Gate process, to refine the metrics of this tool based on experience with
project outcomes, to do postmortem analyses of projects to learn from the use
of the process, and to incorporate clear milestones with specific time frames
into the resulting roadmap.
 Now that some evaluation standards related to codes and standards
development have been in place for a number of years, the BFRL should
compare actual performance and outcomes with those estimated using these
methodological standards.
 Efforts should continue to focus on implementing performance-based
standards and integrating life-cycle concepts into building design and
construction practices.
 The BFRL needs to develop a model for sustained operation of the National
Structural Fire Resistance Laboratory involving the coordination of in-house
and extramural activities, and it needs to develop a protocol for the selection
of extramural projects and collaborative activities.
 The BFRL should work to ensure that the planning and maintenance of the
mandated Disaster and Failure Events Studies and Data Archiving activity do
not impair the professional staff’s ability to discharge ongoing programmatic
responsibilities in the BFRL effectively.
 In the area of staffing, outreach programs to and partnerships with universities
should be continued in order to recruit young talent and to provide
postdoctoral fellowships to handle the increased workload as well as to
increase the pool of potential new talent for the interdisciplinary competencies
needed for the Office of Applied Economics. Staffing difficulties are
exacerbated by the requirement to hire U.S. citizens.
 BFRL management should consider developing a formal succession planning
program for technical staff in key programmatic areas.
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 The building program would benefit from the development of new
measurement science in construction at both the component and the systems
levels.
 The BFRL should pursue the spectrum of opportunities and potentials
available to it, including the following, to expand its scope of inquiry and
analysis in building and fire safety: the addition of staff with leadership
potential in flame-heat-transfer modeling; the definition of an appropriate role
for the BFRL with respect to the growing nuclear power industry; the
integration of life-cycle analysis and sustainability into building performance
assessment; anticipation of the measurement science needed to support the
transition to performance-based standards and the Smart Grid, as well as the
multidimensional nature of building performance.
 Additional resources are needed to support the wind program; the program
continues to be handicapped by the lack of a wind tunnel.
Recommendations applicable to each of the BFRL Strategic Priority Areas are
presented in their respective chapters.
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